All three of them looked at their watches at the same time. It was barely eight in the morning and that meant one thing.
“Dad had a sleepover!” chanted the brothers, right before giving each other fist bumps and laughing.
Wyler looked mortified at the attention his sex life was getting, and being called out on it by his sons. In his past, it was his affairs that ruined their lives.
“You two knock it off,” admonished Elizabeth. “Now I know why I’m your favorite, Dad,” she stated, pinching both of them.
Bly stood behind Wyler and crossed her arms. Both men shut up pretty fast, and Elizabeth started laughing. “She’s going to kick both your asses and I get to watch!”
“Elizabeth!” Bly exclaimed, her arms still crossed. “Profanity is not needed at seven thirty in the morning.”
Wyler touched the woman on the arm, giving her an admonishing look.
“Seriously? I’m not even in the house. I certainly can say ass in a rental home while on a job. In fact, I think it’s okay to say in my car alone, on a roof overlooking the Rez and even possibly in a box, with a fox or with a goat in a moat.”
Wyler choked on his coffee and began laughing at his daughter-in-law’s antics. “I love you, Elizabeth. How is my other grandson doing?” he inquired, changing the subject.
“He’s good. We’re just about ready to head out to go watch an autopsy.”
Bly shook her head. “You shouldn’t be chasing after killers while you’re pregnant. A sensible woman would be home with her son.”
All three men held their breath, waiting for the explosion. While they may all secretly agree, they each knew not to say it out loud. Hell hath no fury like a gun toting woman.
Elizabeth fought hard to swallow the tears. It was like the woman knew her one weakness and took aim. “No one ever accused me of being sensible, Bly, and I’m here for the victims that have no voice. I’m sure my son will understand one day and forgive me. I love chasing assholes that think they can pull shit over on the Feds.” She purposely used every profanity that Bly hated with exception of the big one. That one is reserved for special moments.
Both men offered her a fist bump in solidarity.
“Next topic for the morning, Bly?” Elizabeth challenged.
Wyler handed his grandson O’s and smiled at his family. “Go be safe today. Call me later tonight. I love you three.” It was best to cut the call fast. He was going to have to talk to Bly about cutting Elizabeth a break and soon. Before it got ugly and someone, mainly Bly, got hurt or fired.
She blew him and CJ kisses.
The video conference went black. “Wow, dad’s getting laid in our house and Bly thinks she’s our mother. This is going to make for an interesting football season when we’re drinking, cursing and putting our feet on the furniture,” stated Whitefox, knowing the woman was going to be a pain in all their asses.
“We can always fire her,” offered Blackhawk. He was pretty sure the woman was going to get told off when she commented on Elizabeth’s job and mothering. There was going to be a discussion when he saw the woman again, privately. Whether his father liked her or not, there wasn’t going to be comments aimed at his wife.
Elizabeth was off limits.
“Dad likes her, so we suck it up,” Elizabeth stated. It wasn’t easy to swallow the words that came to mind when the housekeeper told her what she should and shouldn’t be doing. “For Wyler, I’ll tolerate her jackassery and tomfoolery, and ignore her nineteen fifties mentality.”
Ethan thought about it. “Oh Crap! If dad marries her, she’ll be living above our garage with him.”
Elizabeth stood up and pushed in her chair.
“Angel, where are you going?” inquired Callen, suddenly worried about her.
Elizabeth kept walking. “Suddenly, I don’t feel so well. I think I may throw up.”
~ Chapter Four ~
Wednesday mid-morning
Somethings in life were generally all the same, despite the time or location. Autopsies were one of those things. It didn’t matter if you were in a lab, a bunker, or a field, because ultimately it all came down to one thing; the body.
Entering the basement lab, Elizabeth, Callen and Ethan knew that it was going to be pretty gruesome. None had seen the bodies up close and personal yet, and that was always the worst part. Well that and when Doctor Leonard removed the skull cap and took out the squishy brain. That ranked up there pretty high on the ick scale.
“Morning Doctors,” Elizabeth stated, walking into the section designated as the morgue. Both their doctors were occupied, doing their perspective jobs.
Chris was prepping his tools, and Tony was inspecting the box of bones that he’d pulled from the cave.
“Hey Lyzee, welcome to our new temporary home,” Chris cheerily called, grinning. Then he dropped his voice. “Are you going to be okay through this autopsy?” Chris knew she’d struggled through their last assignment with the crispy skinned corpses.
“I should be good, as long as you don’t plan on cooking anything on, in, or around the bodies.” She grabbed a chair, spinning and straddling it. Since there were no spare lab tables, Elizabeth couldn’t perch herself in her customary spot.
Tony grinned at the woman, waving a bone around. “I can give you the update on the bones, before Chris begins his cut fest.
Elizabeth waited for it.
“Without a doubt they’re animal bones. We have the bones of a canis lupis familiaris and also ovis aries.”
Blackhawk stared at the man, wondering why he made them work for it so early in the morning. “Okay so a dog and what?”
“Sheep,” answered Chris, laughing. He could tell what they were thinking. “Next time you hear it, you’ll know it. Think of this as a teaching facility.”
Elizabeth stared at them. “How about I teach you humility by dragging you both out back, letting our staff watch me boot your ass around the parking lot for shits and giggles, boys?”
Chris pulled the sheet off the first corpse, clearing his throat. He didn't doubt she’d do it. “How about we begin with the bodies? This is the fresher one, and I figured we could start with the less nasty one and go from there.”
Blackhawk nodded, grateful for all of their sakes. “It’s appreciated, Doctor Leonard.”
Elizabeth glanced over at Callen, waiting for the man to start. When he stood there almost lost, she jumped in for him. “Guys, before we jump into the deep end of the pool, since our corpses are missing skin, can you give me some clue about ethnicity?”
Tony answered. “Both are Caucasoid. I checked the back of their skulls, and they aren’t bulbous, so that eliminates Natives. Their noses rule out African American and Asian.”
Okay, that was something. Elizabeth nodded at her ME, giving him their signal. She was ready.
The ME pulled out his recorder, placing it on the table beside the deceased man. “I can tell right off that the COD would appear to be a blow to his chest. I’m going to say preliminarily that it was a sharp object.”
“Like a knife?” questioned Callen, entering in information on his tablet. Since he was running this one, he tried to remember exactly what Elizabeth would do. First up would be baiting the ME for details.
“I can’t tell you that until I open him up.”
Whitefox glanced over at his brother and woman. Both watched him grinning. “So, what you’re saying is that after ten years and thousands of bodies, you aren’t sure what killed him? Wow, that’s too bad. You’d think by now you could just look,” he baited.
Leonard glanced up, starting to answer, and then realizing what the man was trying to do. “Nice try, Director Whitefox, but let me assure you that I’ve been run through the Lyzee ringer. You can’t jack with my mind nearly as well as she can.”
Elizabeth started laughing and offered Callen a fist bump. “That was an awesome try, Cal. I do believe he almost fell for it. I will go on the record and state that I’ve used that one on him myself. I think
we were working together about three years.”
Chris cut into his chest. “Yeah, you manipulated me with the whole ‘green ME’ trick and I fell for it.”
Callen shrugged. “I had to give it a shot.”
Pulling out his scalpel, Chris removed the heart. “Director, come take a look,” he said, waiting for Callen to take a spot beside him. “This is a long, narrow slice. Not at all jagged or torn. If I were to be pressured into guessing, I’d say you have a hunting knife. Not serrated but smooth.”
“Which makes sense since he was completely skinned,” added Elizabeth. “I don’t hunt, and I’ve never skinned anything in my life, but I imagine you need a sharp knife.”
“I used to skin the deer granddad killed,” offered Callen. “You need a shorter sharp knife. You want control or you can’t get it off in one piece.”
Blackhawk agreed. “You wouldn’t carry two knives if you were a killer. You’d use one weapon of choice and utilize it. There’d be one strike to the heart, and then get to work to remove the skin.”
Chris looked up from his organs, checking out the exposed muscle tissue. “If you look at the cuts, they’re smooth and not choppy. The killer took his time removing the dermis, and from the look of it most likely in one piece.”
Elizabeth thought she’d seen it all. Apparently, she’d been wrong.
“If you look here and here,” he said, pointing at a line down the front of his body and back of his arms. Barely visible in the muscle tissue were fissure like cuts. “It appears these were his initial cuts, and then he probably worked the skin off from there. Pulling it back, slicing away the adipose tissue beneath. Since I don’t see anything on the fingers, I’m going to guess he pulled the skin down and off.”
Callen had a pretty gruesome picture in his mind. “You mean like yanking off a glove?”
Doctor Leonard nodded in affirmation.
Ethan was curious. “Okay, but why?”
“A skin suit?” Elizabeth offered.
Callen sighed and rubbed his eyes. “We’re heading back to the Skinwalker theory, aren’t we?” he asked, knowing that was the last direction he wanted to take.
Immediately, he had Tony Magnus’s attention. “Is that what we’re investigating?” The man’s excitement was hard to miss.
“The chief of the tribal council seems to believe that they have a Skinwalker loose on the Rez. Then we had these two bodies pop up without their dermis.”
Tony grinned. “In college I did my dissertation on the Native American beliefs and the relevance to historical fact. One of the topics was the Skinwalkers or the yee naaldlooshii.”
“Bless you,” snickered Elizabeth.
Both of the men she was sleeping with got it, the doctors looked confused. That only made it funnier.
“Anyway,” Tony continued, “Skinwalkers are based on the practice of pre-dated witchcraft.”
Blackhawk jumped in. “We get that part, but we don’t believe that there’s someone running around absorbing the energy and traits of the dead.”
“It would explain the animal bones we found beside the corpses,” Tony offered.
Elizabeth wasn’t buying the whole thing. “Or some animal could have used that cave before the killer and left some bits and pieces behind.”
“True.”
Callen add that to his notes.
Tony picked up a bone, holding it in his hands. “We have a problem.”
“I really hate when anyone says that during an investigation,” stated Elizabeth. “What’s wrong?”
He placed the bone on the palm of his hand and looked at his bosses. “We have a spare bone.”
Elizabeth rolled her shoulder, trying to alleviate the tension that was already building in her body over the doctor’s words. That would be the other thing she didn't want to hear in an investigation. After the last time in Red River, ‘spare parts’ were just something that made her edgy.
Blackhawk was hoping they were wrong.
“Maybe the raccoon had a spare toe,” Elizabeth offered, saying a little prayer.
Both doctors looked at her like she was crazy.
“Or not,” she stated.
Tony shook his head. “I have a proximal phalange that isn’t from one of the skinless men.”
“Hell!” Elizabeth muttered, knowing that meant there was another victim somewhere, but this one was in pieces.
“If we have bones from a victim,” added Blackhawk, “then that might mean that this killer has been at it a while. These may not be the first two victims.”
Elizabeth placed her forehead on her arms, resting on the back of the chair.
Callen went on alert and moved to her side. “Angel, are you okay?” he inquired, nervously.
“I just got this really bad feeling.”
“Uh oh,” said Ethan.
Elizabeth glanced up at her men. “This is going to be a hot freaking mess.”
* * *
Tori rode Wakanda down the trail beside Julian. It had been about twenty minutes into their trek, and no one was speaking. It was probably the first time in their relationship that it was just simply uncomfortable.
This time, Tori wasn’t backing down. Something was eating at the man, and she deserved to know.
Julian wanted to stop and talk to Tori, but he wasn’t sure what to say. Yeah, her joking rubbed him the wrong way this morning, but how was she to know? The idea of her cheating crushed his soul. He’d been there once before and going there again wasn’t an option. Maybe that was why he was so overly possessive when it came to Victoria.
Watching her, he believed that every step further into the forest with this sitting between them, damaged them even more. “Are you ever going to talk to me again?” he finally asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
Tori still didn’t say anything to him.
Julian hopped down off Weeko and ran his hands over her black coat. Yeah, this didn’t bode well for their day on the trail. It was going to simply make it longer.
Bending down, he analyzed the grass along the trail and whistled. Wakanda stopped walking. Even when Tori nudged her, the mare wouldn’t move.
“We’re going to take a break. There’s a stream fifty feet from here, and the horses need a rest for a while.”
Tori dismounted from the mare and led her to the water. Pulling an apple out of her pack, she cut it in half and fed it to her mare. “Here you go, baby,” she crooned and let the horse nudge her, as she ran her hands down her neck. “Weeko, you want some apple?” she called, only to have the mare wander to her side.
“Traitors,” muttered Julian to his horses, as he waited for them to finish eating. When they were done, he led them to the water, dropping their reigns to let them drink. He took a blanket down off Wakanda’s back and laid it beneath a big tree. “Want something to eat?” he asked, pulling out some jerky.
Tori wasn’t really hungry. “No thank you.”
“You’re angry with me.” It was simply a statement.
There was no point pretending. “I am. You lied to me this morning. I find that I don’t want to be in a relationship with anyone that thinks lies are acceptable.” Tori had been down that road before. Because of falsehoods, the man she was going marry had died in her arms. Deceit only ruined lives and had no place in her life.
Julian laid back on the blanket, unsure what to say to her.
“You tell me you love me, but you lied right to my face. You're keeping something held back, and it’s going to ruin us.”
That was the last thing he wanted to happen. “Before I met you, I was in a pretty serious relationship. Not marriage serious, but living together.”
Tori joined him, lying on her side to watch his face for truth. “And?”
“I came home from work one day, and found her in bed with some other man in my home.”
Her heart caught in her chest, realizing that her teasing him that morning was hurtful. “I’m sorry, Julian. I didn’t know and I didn’t mean to cause
you pain.”
He pushed on with his story, despite the ache it still caused in his chest. “I honestly thought she was happy. There weren’t any signs- none. I thought I’d surprise her and leave early. I got my boss to let me off duty; I drove home and walked in on my girlfriend riding some other man.”
“Oh Baby,” she whispered, seeing the hurt in his eyes. “I won’t ever do that to you, Julian. I swear.”
“The rational part of me knows you were kidding this morning to be funny. The irrational, jealous, paranoid part of me is looking for the fact in the fiction.” He rolled to his side to and stared into the smoky blue eyes. “If I came home and found you in bed with another man, I’d lose control and have to kill him.”
Tori ran her fingers down his cheek, trying to offer him peace. “Julian, I won’t ever cheat on you. I love you too much to sleep with anyone else but you.”
“Promise, Victoria? Promise me that you won’t break my heart like that? If you want to leave, just don’t destroy me in the process.”
She leaned over his body and met his lips in a kiss, sealing the vow. “I promise, Julian Trenton Littlemoon,” she whispered against his mouth
Everything that was previously knotted slowly released, as Tori slowly kissed him. Rolling, he placed her beneath him and controlled the mating of their mouths. When her hands slid across his body and started working on the buckle of his belt, Julian was lost in bliss.
It was then that one of the horses startled, and Julian went dead still. “Tori, someone’s here watching us,” he hissed, in her ear. “Don’t move, okay Honey?”
“My gun is in the back of my pants,” she whispered back, forcing him to roll off her body and to his side.
Slowly, Julian slid his hand around her hip and to the back of her jeans. When his fingers found the grip, he listened to the area around him. “I want you to stay with the horses. If you hear a gunshot, get on Weeko and ride hard and fast. My gun is in the pack. Grab it and get the hell out of here.”
There was no way she was leaving the man she loved in the woods with an invisible killer.
“I love you,” he whispered, pushing of her body and running towards the trees where the sound had emanated.
Darkness Of Truth (An FBI/Romance Thriller~ Book 6) Page 10